


The deserving kind

by Stonestrewn



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood, Blood Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuts, F/F, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5018503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Something… Something feels wrong.” Merrill says. Her eyes dart from one end of the room to the other</p><p>“We’ve been trapped in a cave full of demons. If anything about it felt right, I’d be worried.”</p><p>(Merrill's hand in hers - it's a gamble, but Isabela's willing to take the chance.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The deserving kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mautadite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mautadite/gifts).



> Hello! Thank you for the lovely prompts, I'm a long time fan of your writing so I was thrilled at getting the chance to make something for you. I hope you'll like this! The tags look very alarming and the story does get rather dramatic, but I promise there are hugs and chocolates and a kiss at the end.

Isabela coughs, which means she’s still alive. So that’s a good start.

She moves her left arm. She moves her right arm. They’re both still attached, all ten fingers responding, and when she wiggles her toes they’re all there, too. And there’s the ground beneath her. She’s flat on her face, no wonder she’s coughing, breathing more dust than air. 

Isabela raises herself up on her elbows, gravel prickling beneath them. Nothing really hurts, - not enough to be noteworthy, anyway - but there’s a high-pitched ringing in her ears and she can’t see for shit. She reaches for the daggers on her back, finds they aren’t there. She remembers: rocks falling, yelling, a push-

She blinks into the compact darkness. “Hawke? Aveline? You there?”

“...Isabela?”

Merrill, sounding small and frightened and unlike herself. Merrill doesn’t scare in battle. She’s skittish in crowds and nervous with smalltalk, but faces demons, dragons, whatever ancient horror decides to be a pain in the ass on any given day without flinching. This little teary tremble in her voice now makes Isabela’s gut curl in on itself. 

“I’m here, Kitten. Keep talking and I’ll come find you,” she says, getting on her hands and knees.

“Oh no, let me get a light for you instead,” Merrill says. A pale blue glow spreads through the cave.

Such as it is. It was a vast open space when they entered when the four of them entered, what, half an hour ago? An hour? Isabela isn’t sure. It’s down to less than a third of its original size now, cut off by a mess of fallen rock, floor to collapsed ceiling. A cave-in. As if this demon infested blight-hole wasn’t bad enough already without the exit closed. 

Merrill sits on the ground a few paces away and Isabela closes the distance between them in a few quick strides over the rubble. The relief is so palpable she can taste it, all sweet on her tongue. Merrill is sitting up so she’s fine, just had a bit of a scare, and now they’ll find the others and be on their way. 

Then she sees the blood stains in the sand. 

“Oh, shit.”

Isabela’s on her knees beside her in a flash, fumbling for the healing potions at her waist that aren’t there. Did she drop them when the cave came down? She must have because they aren’t there, and isn’t today just one delightful discovery after the other. 

“Have you seen Hawke?” Merrill says. “Or Aveline?”  


“I’ll worry about them in a second,” Isabela says, “as soon as we deal with your bleeding thing here.”

The cut is on her right foot, down the side. Nasty looking and deep, the amount of blood under Merrill’s leg doesn’t have Isabela feeling good about it. Not without healing potions. She needs to look for them, on the off chance the flasks haven’t all broken.

“Hold still,” she says. “I’m going to wrap that up for you:”

The sash around her waist is reasonably clean on the side facing in against her hip. Merrill makes a little whine as Isabela ties it right over the wound, making sure to put pressure above as well as right on the cut.

“It will be ruined forever,” she says, and Isabela winks. 

“I’m always up for soiling a few pieces of clothing with a pretty girl.”

Merrill’s smile is a wavering shadow of what it should be. “This is all my fault.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The cave-in.” She bites her lip. Looks absolutely miserable.

“It wasn’t your fault, Kitten,” Isabela says. If we should blame anyone it should be Hawke, for making making us go down here in the first place.” She sighs. “Always with the damn caves and not often enough with the treasure.”

“But it was. I sent a stone fist at the ceiling, that’s why it came down. If I hadn’t-”

“Did you mean to do that?”

“No, I- I was aiming for one of the shades attacking us. But it ducked, and I missed. And the ceiling…”

“There you go. _That’s_ who we’re blaming.”

“Who?”

“The shade, for ducking.”

Merrill’s drooping ears twitch. Isabela can’t tell whether she’s holding back a giggle or a protest. Her face is twisted up in worry, probably pain as well. Her foot must be hurting and Isabela curses under her breath. If there’s even a drop left of those healing potions around somewhere, she needs to find it. 

“Do you think…” Merrill swallows. “Do you think they made it? Hawke and Aveline.”

The thought of a shattered shield, a broken staff, buried somewhere beneath the rocks shoots through Isabela’s mind like a spike of ice. She can’t go there. 

“Of course,” she says, smiling like she means it. “You’ve seen Aveline, the woman is built like a bronto. Something like this? She’ll shake it right off and keep barging. And Hawke… Hawke always comes out on top.”

Merrill nods. Isabela wants nothing more than to ruffle the dust out of her hair, kiss the furrows from her brow. It’s only been a month since another cave, a cave with a body on the ground and Merrill on her knees. Isabela isn’t the type to dwell, but the memory of Merrill’s tears has stayed with her, buzzing around inside her heart like a gnat. Bad things shouldn’t happen to young girls, to young women. And Merrill, sweet and bright and darling Merrill, if there was such a thing as justice in the world she wouldn’t have to see a single day of sadness in her life. 

She nudges her shoulder, catches Merrill’s eye. If she’s swaying, if her footing has been lost, then Isabela will have to stand all the sturdier. 

“Hey, I’m going to have a look around for my stuff, so sit tight.” Merrill nods again, slowly, and Isabela turns the nudge into a gentle squeeze. “Chin up, Kitten. We’re getting out of this, I promise, and then the drinks and dirty stories are on me.”

Merrill takes a deep breath. It starts of shaky, but is steady toward the end. “Yes. All right.” She holds the blue mage light a little higher so it’s light can reach further.

Isabela tries not to think about it. She does her very best, but the fear of finding a body, two bodies, grits Isabela’s teeth. She rounds every boulder with a racing pulse until she’s looked everywhere and the relief nearly overwhelms her. Neither Hawke nor Aveline are on this side of the rubble. This means they’re alive on the other side. It has to. 

Finding her daggers is less of a relief. One blade is broken clean off, the other caught between a rock and the cave wall and refusing to budge. Isabela draws the knife she keeps in her right boot and hopes she won’t have to use it. It’s shorter, slimmer, not what she prefers in combat, and if it fails she only has two more. This will teach her never to leave the house with less than eight knives on her body. 

The situation is no better with the healing potions: she finds nothing but shards and wet sand. She scoops some up and considers it as a poultice, but ultimately throws both the idea and the healing mud away. If the potion to sand ratio wouldn’t make up for essentially rubbing dirt into an open wound, well. That would be bad. 

“So that was a bust,” Isabela says as she returns to Merrill, who lifts a finger in response. 

“Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?”

“There’s a draft.”

“Where?”

Merrill tugs at a buckle on Isabela’s boots to bring her on the same level. “I think… I think it’s coming from over there,” she says, ears alert, and points to the other end of the cave.

“There’s no exit on that wall, I checked.”

“Hmm.” Merrill taps her chin. “Would you mind if I had a look, too?”

Isabela helps her to her feet. Foot. The right one with the cut is effectively useless, but with one arm slung over Isabela’s shoulders and one using her staff for support, she manages well enough. The little blue mage light dances in her hand only a few inches from Isabela’s face. 

“Now you must feel it,” Merrill says as they near the wall, one hobbling step at a time, and when she turns her face up and tries for it, Isabela does. 

“It’s coming from above?”

Merrill leans her weight on her staff and raises the light as high as she can. There, a couple feet above her head is an opening in the rock, a ledge and a hollow behind it.

“Do you think we should give it a try?” she asks.

Isabela hesitates. If Aveline and Hawke are still alive - and they are - they’re on the other side of the cave-in. Why, Aveline is probably ramming her head against the boulders right now, trying to break through. If they want to be rescued, it may be better to stay put.

On the other hand, this is a place full of demons. It’s the very reason they’re here, Hawke found a scroll or something. Isabela didn’t care to listen for the specifics because, honestly, it’s always something about some scroll or whatever. The cave is clear for now, by their efforts before the cave-in as well as the cave-in itself, but that may not last, especially not with Merrill’s blood spilled. She’d rather not get cornered with her back against the wall, and if there’s one thing life has taught her it’s that the only person you can always count on to rescue you is yourself.

“Yeah. I think it’s worth a shot. I’ll go first and pull you up after me, sound good?”

Merrill nods her assent, and Isabela takes a running stance, scaling up the cave wall and leaping at the ledge. She makes it on the first try. The ledge is the starts of a tunnel continuing on into the mountain, into the dark. It’s a gamble but she’s willing to give it a chance, and Isabela lies herself flat on her belly, arms over the edge, to reach down for first Merrill’s staff, then Merrill herself. 

She weighs almost nothing. Tall, especially for an elf, more than a head taller than Isabela but so skinny, straight hips and flat chest and thighs slimmer than Isabela’s upper arms. She drapes Merrill’s arm around her shoulder again and her own around Merrill’s waist. Their legs brush when they walk, cold mail against Isabela’s bare skin. They make quite a pair: Isabela only a little over five feet, generous both in curves and muscle, and lanky Merrill towering over her. 

Isabela likes lanky. She likes big, pretty eyes and pointy chins and slender fingers. She likes- She likes Merrill. 

And one day Merrill will find someone. Someone who will have earned her, someone just as sweet and bright and darling, and Isabela is going to be happy for them both. Happy for the lucky sod who gets her, and who had better treat her right. Isabela keeps her friends close and her daggers closer, but she would rather not test the edge on some former beau of Merrill’s who swindled her heart. Better to not have Merrill losing at that game at all. 

Better. She deserves better. 

“How’s the foot,” Isabela asks after a few minutes of walking. The tunnel is narrow and the walls are curiously smooth. Unlike the cave, this was clearly carved out by someone. Or something. She wonders if that should be alarming her. 

“Oh, it’s fine,” Merrill says, and her tine is a little too breezy. 

“You have to tell me if it hurts. Can you stand on it? At all?”

“Not… Not really, no. I’m sorry.”

Isabela chuckles. “No need to apologize, Kitten. It’s not like you cut your foot _at_ me.”

“Of course not! That would be silly,” Merrill says. “It’s only, if something attacks us again it will make it a bit trickier to fight.”

And that does alarm Isabela. “We’ll handle it,” she says anyway, because she has to and they have to and they will. “But remind me to buy you a pair of nice, thick pair of boots later.”

“Will they be as tall as yours?”

“Do you want them to be?”

“I could never walk in those. I don’t think I could even stand still in them without falling over,” Merrill says. “Oh, and I would look dreadful, wouldn’t I? I think they’re a little too dashing for me.”

“Nonsense. There’s no such thing as too dashing.”

Merrill sighs, small and wistful. “For me there is.”

“I’ll bet you five sovereigns you’re wrong. I’ll bet all it would take is a good pair of boots, and you’d be as dashing as they come. Boots, and maybe a bottle of Rum.”

“Rum is good for dashing?”

“Rum is good for everything.”

“Do you really think I would be?” Merrill says, and finally there’s a smile in her voice. 

“Why not? You can be whatever you decide to be. The trick to being anything is just deciding that’s what you are.”

“It seems so-” 

Merrill stops mid-sentence. Mid-step. Isabela has barely had time to react, to wonder what’s wrong, when the stone at her feet starts to bubble.

“Shade!” Merrill shouts, taking her arm from around Isabela and flinging the mage light at the huddling creature rising out of the ground. It bursts in a flash, blinding the shade just long enough for Isabela to find her bearings and plunge the knife into its neck, through the thick, scraggly weave of not-skin. It goes out with a gurgle, but there are more rising. In the dark Isabela can’t tell where, but she feels the tremors in the stone.

She spins around. Two large points of light with an otherworldly glow blink to life roughly where she thinks she left Merrill, the single eyes of two new shades. 

Isabela cries out in warning. She lunges for one of the shades but without a proper visual she miscalculates, slams into the tunnel wall instead. Pain shoots into her shoulder, down her arm, but she doesn’t drop the knife. When she straightens and turns back towards them she can’t see the eyes of the shades anymore, and that means they’re both facing Merrill, and what is she doing just standing there? She hurt her foot, not her hands, it shouldn’t mean she can’t attack and she needs to, she needs to do it now, before- 

Isabela pushes herself off the wall, rushing forward on a hunch, ends up smashing into the other wall instead. It isn’t quite as bad now that she was bracing for it and both shade-eyes turn to her, so that’s something. Not the best something, but there’s no time for something better. She pulls the knife she keeps between her breasts and throws it, hears the shriek when it hits. Draws the other boot knife, throws at the other shade and it hits, it seriously hits, if she survives she’s going to live on this a while. Two straight hits, and in the dark!

But now the shades are closing in. Isabela takes her stance, she’s ready for them, and then a wave rolls through the ground.

Impossibly, like she’s standing on top of the sea. A wave and a burst of green liquid, or lightning, liquid lightning. It strikes up from the ground, wraps itself around both demons, strangles them until they melt. 

It’s done in seconds. The lightning, liquid, magic-whatever goes out and the darkness is as deep as ever, like it was never disturbed. 

“Mind turning the light back on?” Isabela calls, and can’t help that her voice trills with triumph. A victory is a victory. 

The mage light flares up again, casts its pale blue glow through the tunnel, over the filthy rags that are all that remains of the demons, over Merrill. The sight of her is worrying. 

She’s leaning against the wall, staff caught in the crook of her elbow, one hand keeping the light going and the other presses against her chest. Dark stains on her tunic. Blood.

“Are you all right?” Merrill says, anxious.

“Are _you_?”

Isabela takes her hand, coaxing it from her chest so she can inspect the injury. The strip of skin left exposed by Merrill’s mail and leather arm guards is unharmed, but there’s a long gash across her palm. It’s bleeding quite a bit. Isabela frowns. She tugs the scarf from her hair and starts wrapping up the wound as best she can. 

“I’m so sorry,” Merrill says. ”When you let go of me I lost my balance a little. I nearly fell and then I had to reach my knife to cast a spell and you have to undo these little things on the scabbard. So practical, usually, though now- I was so scared I wouldn’t manage on time! You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“Kitten, I’m fine. But should you really be doing this? I think you’ve bled enough for one day already.”

“Yes. I should. It’s the only way I have to fight. To help you.”

“I know you have a few spells up your sleeve that don’t involve blood magic.”

“I do, but…” Merrill purses her lips. “I’m out of mana.”

“Drink a-”

“I’m out of lyrium potions as well. I was out before the cave came down, and Hawke had the rest… Oh, don’t wrap the bandage too tight. I need a little to keep the light.”

Isabela doesn’t like it. Merrill is a skilled mage, well trained and powerful, someone she’s never doubted when it comes to watching her back, no matter the kind of magic she uses to do so. But she doesn’t usually practice blood magic without some means on hand to replenish what she’s lost once the enemy is down. 

“Maybe we should try to do without for a bit.”

“What? No! We need to see where we go. What if this ends in a chasm, we would go tumbling right down into it. Or, or we could get ambushed. There might be deepstalkers!”

“I know, but-”

“Isabela. Please,” Merrill says. The look in her eyes are sharp. “Can you trust that I know what I’m doing?”

“I do,” Isabela says. She does trust Merrill, honestly, she does, it’s just the situation they’re in. She’s out of her element and Merrill is injured. They will get out of this, of course, but she doesn’t at all like it.

“Thank you.” Merrill straightens. “Let’s keep going.”

Isabela makes a sweep for the two knives she threw before they leave. No luck finding them, why would she have? Nothing’s gone right this far so why wouldn’t the knives up and melt together with the demons.

She squeezes the only dagger she has left. There will be no throwing this one. 

They walk, one step at a time. The tunnel turns this way and that and Isabela’s not sure she could point out the direction of the cave anymore. Being underground is throwing off her internal compass. One more thing to hate about caves. Next time Hawke comes skipping into the Hanged Man wanting to go demon diving, Isabela’s going to say ‘no thank you, Madame Lady Champion” and keep on drinking. 

Merrill is breathing a little too hard for Isabela to feel at ease. Not that she herself is on top of her game. Her head is aching - too long since she ate, and maybe she bumped her head in the cave-in.The ringing in her ears hasn’t gone away yet and her legs are heavier than they should be. If she had a stamina potion, a few dried apple slices from Avelines pouch… But she doesn’t. She’ll have to make do.

“Actually, you know what? I’m rethinking the whole thing about blaming that ducking shade for this fiasco,” Isabela says, mostly to distract herself from fixating on all their current disadvantages. “I’m blaming Aveline.”

“Why?”

“She’s just so… blameable.”

“That’s not very nice,” Merrill says, ears twitching both in amusement and consternation. 

Isabela grins. “I know.”

She expects Merrill to giggle or sigh or anything that helps lift their spirits, she can be a real good sport at times like these, but she doesn’t. She chews her lip and the mood remains what it was. Bleak. 

The tunnel, on the other hand, is changing. Getting wider, considerably so, the walls more polished. The floor starts sloping up, near imperceptibly at first but soon they’re walking pretty much uphill.

Never before has her thighs straining filled Isabela with so much hope. It’s giving Merrill some trouble, but going up means going towards the surface. The draft is stronger, the air fresher. 

“Look,” Merrill says after several minutes of climbing. She lets the mage light go out, and Isabela sees it, too. 

A light at the end of the tunnel. Faint, but there. And not the sick purple-y glow of a shade, either. Real light. 

They speed up. Much as they can, with Merrill’s foot the way it is. The tunnel keeps getting wider, the ceiling higher, the walls are lined with pillars. The floor is covered in sharp-cornered stone tiles. It’s no longer a tunnel but a hallway, and when they reach the first torch crystal, the light that has been beckoning them, they find themselves on the threshold of a large chamber, carved into the mountain. 

Isabela peers inside. The room is large and round, dimly lit. Completely empty save for the crystals attached to the walls. On the opposite side there’s another doorway, and behind it what looks like stairs. Could be another way out. Oh, thank fuck. 

Beside her, Merrill shifts uneasily. 

“Something… Something feels wrong.”

“We’ve been trapped in a cave full of demons. If anything about it felt right, I’d be worried.”

“It’s not that,” Merrill says. Her eyes dart from one end of the room to the other. “We shouldn’t be here.”

“So let’s go on and fix that.” Isabela takes a step into the room. 

“Wait. Do you see those lines on the floor?”

“What lines?” Isabela says, taking another step at the same time as Merrill shouts: “don’t!” and the air itself snaps shut around her. 

She can’t breathe. She can’t see. Her skin is stinging, a burning stench in her nostrils, and she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. She’s dangling off the ground and a fist of lightning squeezes her ribcage, squashing her lungs, crushing her from all sides until her every bone is creaking. She’s going to snap. She’s going to break and she still can’t _breathe_ \- 

And then it’s over. A flood of energy washes over her, soothing like cold water. The fist lets go and she drops to her knees, gasping. 

“Isabela!”

Merrill has torn off the bandage on her hand, droplets of blood suspended in the air around her. Isabela is too grateful to be worried, wheezing too hard to scold her for it. She tightens her fingers around her knife, scrambles to her feet and whips around to face whoever attacked her. 

She stares into the maw of a pride demon. 

“Oh, _shit_.”

Her stomach sinks all the way to her ankles, nearly taking the contents of her bladder with it. Isabela isn’t the type to scare easy. She’s faced a couple of these uglies before and it ended bad for the demon, but that was with a full party, with Hawke. This, here? This is one dagger and an injured apostate against a creature standing three times her height. Newly un-prisoned and fresh out of bed, while her and Merrill are already sagging under the events of the day. 

Isabela’s gut curls in on itself again, twists madly, the nausea rising. If it wouldn’t be such a senseless thing to do right now, she might just be sick. 

The pride demon laughs. It flicks one of its hideous hands and summons a whip of lightning, lets it crackle overhead. Taking the time to gloat, the scurvy bastard. 

Isabela takes her stance. Light on her feet, quick with her knife, and she can do this. She has to. 

“Mana!”

Merrill’s voice rings out. Turning around would mean taking her eyes off the demon so Isabela doesn’t, even though the demon now has all nine eyes of its own fixed behind Isabela, on Merrill. What on earth is she doing?

She says something else in Elvish, Isabela has no idea what, and the demon lowers the whip. Supporting herself with her staff she limps further into the room, into Isabela’s field of vision. Blood drops from the wound on her hand, leaves a thin trail behind her, but she holds her head high. She’s covered in dirt, obviously hurt. Yet somehow not a sorry sight. There’s determination in the line of her spine, no trace of hesitation on her face. 

The demon speaks, in Elvish, too. Isabela doesn’t know what it’s saying but it ends with a chuckle, a menacing sound that can only mean trouble. 

“What are you doing?” Isabela hisses. 

Merrill ignores her. She responds to the demon instead. The demon, who laughs again. Who lowers its head in assent, baring its fangs in a grin. And Merrill draws her knife, puts the edge to the crease of her elbow and draws it across. 

“Merrill! No!”

The blood wells from the cut. The demon laughs, triumphant - but Merrill smiles. She lifts the hand holding the knife in a sweeping arch and the blood follows, paints a streak of red in the air. Merrill holds it there for just a second before clenching her fist. There is a flash of blinding white, and when it fades the demon stands paralyzed, caught in a cage of singeing energy. 

Merrill looks at Isabela, eyes wild. “Go, hurry!”

“What did you _do_?”

The room is vibrating with magic, it roars in Isabela’s ears, quivers on her skin. The demon strains against its bonds, but it’s the rivulet of blood from Merrill’s cut that alarms Isabela the most. The flow is too steady. Too heavy. If nothing is done about it soon she’ll risk bleeding out. 

“I tricked it!” Merrill says, giddy in a false and frenzied way. “I said I was here to make a deal and free it, and then, when it lowered its guard to receive my blood I trapped it like this. It won’t hold forever, but it will buy you time to escape. To get help.”

“Get help?” They don’t even know if the stairs do lead to the surface. They don’t know if Hawke and Aveline are still alive, if there will be anyone to rush to their aid. “Merrill, I’m not leaving.”

“Don’t worry. I know you’ll come back.” The tension at the corners of Merrill’s mouth tries to be a smile. “Like with the relic. You came back.”

“Yeah, well,” Isabela says, sour guilt at the back of her throat, “I’ve been sort of thinking it might’ve been better if I’d never left in the first place.”

“It’s better for you if you go-”

“You don’t decide that!”

“No one else!” Merrill yells. She sways on her one unscathed foot, but keeps her fist closed and the energy trapping the demon doesn’t so much as flicker. “No one else is going to die for me. For something that is all my doing!”

“So, what? You’ll die for me instead? That’s bullshit!”

“Isabela. Please.”

“No, Kitten. I’ll stay.”

Isabela closes the space between them and touches Merrill’s shoulder, static making all the little hairs on her arm stand on end. It should feel absurd, calling this woman by the nickname. Her magic infuses the air around them, it sings and surges, smells like iron and death. Here’s the frightful blood mage with a demon in her grasp - but Isabela will never be able to connect the two, Merrill and the example mage, the monster in the Circle closet. So she wields unholy power. She’s still a girl with sunshine smiles and a tender heart, sweet and bright and darling, and Isabela will never fear her. Merrill deserves better. 

Better than dying on her own, abandoned by clan and companions. 

“We’ll take this ugly down,” Isabela says, hopes she sounds like she believes it. Merrill has tears in her eyes but she nods, praise Andraste and her exalted titties, she nods and doesn’t argue. “On three. You drop the cage and I pull you out of range. Ready?”

Merrill nods again, takes a firmer hold on her staff.

“One.”

Isabela looks an arm around her waist. 

“Two.”

Merrill leans into her as Isabela hoists her off the ground.

“Three!”

The magic holding the demon doesn’t so much drop as rupture, sparking every which way as the creature is released. Isabela doves out of the way with Merrill in her arms, hits the ground on her side, rolls over and throws Merrill towards the edge of the room with all the strength she can muster. She’s back on her feet in an instant, brandishing her knife, trying to look all the way the cocky rogue she doesn’t much feel like in this moment, to capture the demon’s attention and keep it away from Merrill, still panting in a heap on the floor. Isabela can only hope she didn’t spend all her blood-mana holding that cage. She can’t open another vein. Not without risking her life. 

The pride demon roars. Deafening, terrifying, but its effect on Isabela isn’t all detrimental. Gets her blood pumping, gets her mind where it needs to be. Gets her in the mood to dance.

“Come on!” She laughs. “You want some of this?”

The demon summons the lightning whip, summons two, swings them around. Isabela just laughs harder. Two whips? Why not! Her and Merrill can’t get any more outmatched than they already are.

She calls out in a wordless taunt and sets off running. Going sideways, the demon turning after her until it’s back is on Merrill. It cracks the whips, both lashing across the floor in a thunderous crack, one of them missing Isabela by inches. The demon raises its arms high to deal another lash and she changes direction on a copper, charging right at it, somersaulting out of the way of the whips striking the ground and leaping between the beast’s legs. She skids to a halt, whirls around, knife at the ready to deal a blow to its back.

She almost doesn’t notice until it’s too late. The demon hasn’t lifted the whips after the strike, it’s swinging them backwards, level with the floor, and now there’s a hedge of lightning closing in on her on both sides. Isabela jumps back, heart in her throat, and nearly doesn’t make it. One tail end licks her thigh, shoots sparks up her hip that multiply through her body in a shock that rattles her teeth. Her hand closes around a pouch of smoke powder and she throws it on reflex, has escaped into the concealing fog before she’s considered the action.

The urge to retreat is overwhelming. She’s in pain, and this isn’t how she likes to fight. Yes, she duels. On battlefields she controls, always with the upper hand. She challenges enemies in battle, sure, lures them out of the fray to dispose of them one on one. But that hinges on there being a fray to lure them from in the first place, on her having only herself to watch out for while Aveline, big and brutish and beautiful Aveline, hogs the attention elsewhere. 

She’s a backstabber. A rascal, a scoundrel, a cheat. She’s not a protector, just a thief with a knife. 

The demon, having lost track of her, roars again. The mountain shakes with its rage as it searches for Isabela. As it doesn’t find her. It swings the whips again in a show of might, and turns towards Merrill. 

Merrill, who’s clinging to her staff, who’s exhausted, whose leg can’t hold her weight, whose fingers are twitching for magic that won’t run to. The demon stalks toward her, laughing, and it’s too far away. Isabela won’t make it, can’t make it, and Merrill’s back is against the wall and the demon lifts the whips-

Isabela throws the knife. 

It hits the demon’s leg hilt first, bounces uselessly off. But the demon stops. It glances over its shoulder, one of its many eyes catching Isabela’s. 

She fumbles for another packet of smoke powder, but she’s out. She’s empty-handed and the demon is coming for her. The demon is lunging at her, and then- Then it’s not. 

It’s like nothing Isabela’s ever seen. A crimson tornado of magic and blood, a whirling inferno of lethal power engulfing the creature feet to horns, carving deep welts into its skin, slowing it to a standstill and peeling off its defenses. The demon kneels. The demon arches its back until it looks ready to snap, face up, like a grotesque bridge. It’s caught and it’s vulnerable and it’s now or never. 

Isabela dashes for the knife, snatches it up. She leaps onto the demon’s head and the whirling magic parts for her so she can find a foothold that won’t sever her limbs. She sinks the knife deep into the demon’s largest eye, all the way into the hilt and then deeper, until all of it is lodged in the beast’s brain, until the monster is melting away beneath her, until it’s dead. Until they’ve won. 

They’ve won but Isabela feels no sense of victory, because she looks at Merrill.

And Merrill falls.

She buckles, headlong. Isabela doesn’t cry out for her, just runs, throws herself down beside her. There’s a new cut across Merrill’s wrist, and it’s deep. The blood is streaming from it in pulsing gushes, soaking her tunic, coating her mail, pooling on the floor.

“Merrill! Oh, Merrill, no-!”

She’s bleeding. She’s bleeding out. Slipping through Isabela’s fingers one heartbeat at a time. Isabela tugs the scarf from around Merrill’s neck, ties it over the wound but it’s useless, drenched in seconds. Merrill’s lips are blue. Her breath is shallow and her eyelids are flickering, she’s barely awake and she deserves better.

A better end than this, dying for a liar and a thief in some nameless hollow, all her sweetness and her brightness wasted.

There are steps coming from the tunnel whence they came. Heavy steps, echoing against the stone, closing in. Isabela has a scream lodged in her throat. Her entire chest is a scream. She has no knife, even her nails are blunt but she swears, whatever comes through that doorway is going to have to tear her apart before it touches Merrill.

“Next time you need to be rescued from a cave I suggest you stay in the actual cave,” Aveline says, storming into the room.

“Aveline!” She can hear how her voice sounds, how broken and desperate, and she doesn’t even care. “It’s Merrill, I’m losing her. Aveline, I’m _losing her!_ ”

Aveline takes barely a second to assess the situation. “Hawke!” Aveline shouts into the tunnel behind her, and there she comes. Hawke’s skin appears gray rather than brown because of the dust on her face, her black hair is matted with it, but she still looks all the way the Champion she is. Looks like hope. 

“She cut herself again,” Isabela says as hawke crouches next to Merrill, brows furrowed and motions urgent. “I told her not to, I swear, she did it anyway and the bleeding won’t-”

“Easy,” Aveline says, putting a hand on her shoulder and gently pulling her back. “Explain later.”

Hawke lays her palms over Merrill’s wounds, the ones on her wrist and elbow. Her magic glows; the skin closes and the bleeding stops. She uncorks a healing potion, lifts Merrill’s head so she can drip it into her mouth. Merrill’s eyes are closed, there’s no telling how conscious she is, but she swallows at least some, Isabela sees her throat moving.

So it’s all right now, isn’t it? She’s healed, she’s not dying anymore, everything’s going to be fine. But then why is Hawke still frowning? 

“What’s wrong?” Aveline asks.

“It’s no good,” Hawke says. “I can’t stop it.” 

“It?”

“She’s been using blood magic to replenish her mana. This isn’t a problem if it’s managed right. Once you stop and heal your wounds, even a simple spell or just a strong enough potion will do to regenerate what you’ve lost. But now, her body is too weak. The consuming spell is still active and it’s not only draining her spirit but hampering the potion’s effects, preventing her system from replacing the blood she’s lost.”

“You can fix that, though,” Isabela says, frantic. “Can’t you? Why can’t you?!”

“Isabela, I’m not a healer. I can dull the pain of a sprain, but I can’t mend a broken bone. This is beyond me.” 

“So, Anders,” Aveline says.

“Yes. We need to get her back to Kirkwall.”

“Can we make it in time?”

“We have to.”

Aveline takes her shield off her back and hands it over to Hawke. She motions to Isabela.

“Get on,” she says.

“Um,” Isabela says. 

“I need to hurry and you are clearly too spent and, frankly, too short to keep up. So get. On.”

Isabela doesn’t argue. Aveline is right on both accounts. She wraps her arms around her neck, legs around her waist, clings to her broad back. Aveline carefully scoops Merrill up. 

“You little fool,” she says, ever so tenderly. 

“I’ll take the rear, in case something has decided to follow us,” Hawke says, and they’re off. 

They opt for the stairs rather than backtracking through the tunnel. It’s a gamble, not knowing where it leads, but Hawke and Aveline are willing to take the chance and Isabela puts her trust in them. Merrill still breathes, but it’s labored. 

sabela would pray, if she was the type. Instead she grits her teeth around the scream still quavering in her chest, buries her face in Aveline’s hair, and hopes.

Aveline bounds up the stairs three steps at a time, keeps a steady pace even as the climb lasts ten minutes, fifteen. It’s impressive, honestly amazing, almost makes Isabela want to take back anything she’s said about woman shaped battering rams not pronounced in awe. 

The eye-watering brightness of daylight is the first lucky thing to happen all day, and the hope Isabela has been forcing grows a little stronger, a little more solid in her belly. Aveline alternates between walking fast and running faster. She’s panting, her shoulders heaving, occasionally muttering under her breath. Sweat runs down her temples and neck in beads. 

Hawke keeps close, staff at the ready, a sharp eye out for threats. 

“What did you fight?” she asks once, while Aveline is moving at relatively slow pace.

“Pride demon,” Isabela replies. She feels Aveline start.

“The two of you? Alone? And you _won_?”

It doesn’t feel like winning. Isabela can see Merrill’s face over Aveline’s shoulder, the blueish tinge of her lips, the dull pallor of her skin. Still, Isabela nods. 

Hawke whistles. “I’m glad I don’t pay you, because I’d have to give you a raise.”

The way back feels like an eternity, though Isabela knows it can’t have taken very long. They weren’t all the way up Sundermount, or miles down the Wounded Coast, but in the abandoned quarry just east of Kirkwall. As they near one of the city gates Hawke runs ahead to warn Anders they’re coming, give him time to prepare.

Aveline turns down the nearest Darktown entrance, a steep ledge leading down into what was once the city reservoir before the population grew too numerous for it to be enough. Varric loves to drop little tidbits like that. This is how Isabela knows the passages you have to shuffle through to get into the Darktown maze once you reach the bottom of the reservoir were carved in secret to facilitate a slave uprising ages ago, one that almost succeeded.

“Hey, put me down now,” Isabela says. The passages are narrow, with low ceilings and slippery floors. “You’ll go faster without me.”

“Only to come back and find you in the gutter with your throat slit?” Aveline scoffs. “I don’t think so.”

Isabela wants to hit her in her thick head, wants to bang her fists against her breastplate until Aveline has the proper priorities hammered into her. But she doesn’t. Too tired. It’s taken everything she has just to hang on this far, and when Aveline ducks into one of the passages she lets it happen without any fuss. 

Once they’re through, exiting into one of the many near identical filthy shafts of Darktown, Hawke’s waiting for them. Isabela jumps off Aveline, and this time Aveline doesn’t raise a stink about it. 

“Anders knows we’re coming, and he thinks he’ll be able to help,” Hawke says. “I’ll take her the rest of the way,” but Aveline is already running, a mad sprint no normal human being should have in them at this point. 

She turns a corner, and Isabela is left with her trembling knees and the howl in her chest and Merrill’s blood crusting on her tunic, on her hands, and she feels sick. Wrung out and shivering, a fraying mess of a person and all she can think of is Merrill. Merrill bleeding on the floor, Merrill barely breathing, Merrill slipping until she’s lost. 

Hawke takes Isabela by the arm. 

“Merrill’s going to be fine,” she says, and it’s amazing how she can say these things, these unbased platitudes, and make them sound like something to believe in. Even Isabela who knows everything about the way the world takes from you, even she finds herself holding on to Hawke’s words like they made any difference at all. “I’ll walk you to the clinic, and you can tell me the whole story of what happened to you.”

She knows it’s just to distract her, but once Isabela starts talking the words won’t stop. She tells Hawke everything, just as it was. The cave-in and the injury, the shades and the knives, the tunnel and the demon and the scramble of a fight. The only thing she leaves out is her own desperation, her fear, her hopelessness. They’re not things she wants to share, not even now, not even with Hawke. 

It’s probably written all over her, anyway, not just in the scrapes on her shoulders and the tremble in her arms, but in her eyes, around her mouth. Isabela is proud of her pokerface, but she’s got no illusions as to the state of it now. 

The clinic comes comes within view and every step is a struggle. Isabela needs to know. Isabela needs to not know, needs to run somewhere she doesn’t have to care, where she thinks of nothing and no one and loss only happens to others. Hawke is a steady presence by her side, a sturdy grip around her wrist and forearm. She won’t let her falter or fail, and Isabela doesn’t know if she loves or hates her for it.

They pass through the clinic doors. Aveline comes towards them, and her smile is soft. 

“She will make it.” 

Isabela’s knees give out. She would topple if not for Hawke, who directs her to a nearby low bunk and sits her down. 

“Can I do anything to help?” Hawke asks, and Aveline shakes her head. 

“Just give Anders space to work. Completely reversing the spell will take some time, but he has this well in hand.”

She should feel happy. They won the gamble, Isabela beat the shittiest odds she’s faced,but she’s just drained. Hollow. So tired she can barely keep track of her own limbs and yet her mind keeps racing round and round in fretful circles. 

“So. Would you care to tell me the full story?” Aveline says. “A pride demon, Maker’s breath.”

Hawke glances at Isabela who nods permission to tell the tale in her stead, but she has only just opened her mouth before she’s interrupted. 

“Hawke!” 

Varric steps inside, hurrying toward them as fast as his short legs can manage. Hawke raises a brow.

“How did you know-?”

“You think the Champion and company can come rushing back into the city looking like they’ve just passed through the digestive tract of a dragon without me hearing about it?” Varric says. He gestures to Fenris, a hunched, spiky shadow behind him. “I took the liberty of fetching Broody on the way.” His eyes fall on Isabela’s blood soaked clothes. “Holy shit, Rivaini, is that…”

“Not mine,” Isabela assures him, though she’s not sure how reassuring she really sounds. Her throat feels raw, still lined with a coating of dust.

Hawke points further into the room, large by Darktown standards, where Anders stands bent over Merrill’s motionless form on the exam table. His magic glows blue and white around them and Isabela’s insides clench with nausea again.

“Oh, Daisy,” Varric says, voice tight. “What have you done to yourself this time?”

So Hawke tells him, the whole thing, just like Isabela told her. She sits on Isabela’s right side on the bunk, Varric on Isabela’s right, Aveline and Fenris standing in front of them. She tells it like it happened, everything is there. But it sounds… different.

Different than the hours of desperate scrambling Isabela clawed her way through. It sounds like a story, a real story, like one of Varric’s tales of the Champion. Like something heroic. Like Isabela was heroic, like she wasn’t just doing whatever seemed right in the moment, a stranded pirate acting on a hunch. 

Hawke’s eyes sparkle while she talks. Her gaze drifts into the story, away from the clinic, and whoever she sees there lights up her face with excitement. Varric has put his broad hand over hers, like she has to be sure she’s really there, as if her presence is precious. Isabela looks up and Aveline’s eyes meet hers in respect she never shows, not with her. When Hawke gets to the part where Isabela dealt the pride demon the final blow Fenris chuckles warmly, like he’s proud of her. 

It makes her want to run away. It makes her want to curl up in the middle and never leave. Their looks, their touches, their words - they wind themselves around her and she can’t decide if it’s a comfort or a trap.

Anders breaks into their circle just as Hawke finishes the story. He wipes his newly washed hands on a rag, threadbare but clean. 

“Merrill’s asleep,” he says, “but you can go see her if you promise not to disturb her.”

Isabela stands along with the others, but Anders pushes her firmly back down. 

“Not you. I want to give you a check-up, make sure you’re going to be all right, too.” 

She’s too fatigued to resist, and when she tries to protest that, really, she’s fine, barely a bruise and she’s looked worse after happy hour at the Hanged Man, Aveline gives her a fierce glare that’s such a stark contrast to how she looked at Isabela a few minutes ago that the surprise makes her lose her thread. That’s her Aveline. Disapproving like she was paid to do it. Come to think of it: as captain of the City Guard, that’s exactly what she is. 

Anders helps her remove her corset and peel off her blood-crusty tunic with detached professionalism. Isabela appreciates it - she’s enlisted his services for… various problems before and he’s often had something snarky to say about it, but today he keeps his tongue in check and she’s glad. He heals the scrapes on her shoulders, checks her abdomen, her legs and her back for swelling and feels around her scalp for bumps. Once satisfied that she’s really as mildly hurt as she’s been claiming all along, he has her drink a concoction of she’d-rather-not-know that tingles down her throat and warms her like there’s a hearth in her stomach. Lastly, he lends her a shirt to wear that reaches below her knees and drops a little bag of chocolate chips in her lap. 

“Finish them all. Healer’s orders,” he says, smiling.

It’s a nonsense idea, Isabela’s not hungry in the least, especially not for sweets. She puts one in her mouth to humor him - and ends up cramming in another handful as soon as the taste registers. So maybe she sort of needed this, a little bit.

“What happens now?” she asks around the chocolates.

“Now? Merrill stays here for the night. Perhaps a couple of nights, it depends on how well the potions take."

“Can I stay?” Isabela pops another few chips in her mouth. “Don’t know why I’m asking, really. Because I’m staying.”

“That’s…” His eyes soften. “Of course.”

“Oh no, she’s not.” Aveline steps up to them, arms crossed. “She’s going home and getting bedrest. Supervised bedrest.”

Isabela rolls her eyes. “You’re kidding.”

“Try me.”

“If you wanted to bed me so bad, big girl, all you had to do is ask,” Isabela says, batting her lashes. Aveline’s cheeks flash red in a heartbeat. “But, wait, what will Donnic says? Unless… it was his idea? I didn’t think you were that kind of couple, but hey.”

“You little-”

Hawke steps in front of Aveline. “Ladies, if you please? Not in a place of healing.”

“You tell her then,” Aveline says. “Tell her she’s not to spend the night without anyone keeping after her. Someone needs to make sure she gets a proper meal, a proper night’s sleep…”

“Uh, I’ll be here,” Anders says.

Aveline’s face says everything about what she thinks of Anders’ ability to look after anyone, including himself. 

“You’re a skilled healer,” she says, “but personally… you’re a mess.”  


Anders straightens, all six feet and too many inches to be polite of him. “Excuse me!?”

Hawke pinches the bridge of her nose. 

“Anyway. I’m staying,” Isabela says. 

“Then so am I,” Aveline says, and though the thought of spending the night anywhere except at Merrill’s side makes Isabela feel numb in ways she can’t articulate, the thought of spending it there together with Aveline almost makes her consider it.

She owes Aveline Merrill’s life, that’s true. And Aveline can be great. In small doses. In certain contexts. But not now, not here, not when she clearly longs to lecture with every fibre of her being. Just this once, there’s nothing about butting heads with Aveline that appeals to Isabela. 

“You do know there are more alternatives than just the two of you around here, right?” Varric says, apparently having decided to join the fray. “Like, say, someone with roguish good looks and a quick wit who hasn’t already spent the day ass deep in demons?

“I’ll stay,” Fenris says. 

They all turn to stare at him.

“What?” Aveline says, speaking for all of them. Fenris has never offered to stay in Anders’ clinic for longer periods of time before, the past hour has been a remarkable new record. He’ll often simply walk out mid conversation if he thinks Hawke lingers too long, where ‘too long’ starts at three minutes. 

“I’ll stay,” Fenris repeats. “This solves your problem, does it not?”

“Great!” Hawke claps her hands together, overly chipper, before anyone else has time to launch another argument. “All is well that ends well.” 

“This is a terrible idea,” Varric says, eyebrows raised in amusement. “You have to realize this is a terrible idea.”

“I’m sure two grown men can behave like grown men for twelve hours,” Hawke says, and Isabela can hear the wear and tear starting come through in her tone. She must be exhausted, too. From the fighting, the fear for Merrill, and the burden of ensuring cooperation always resting on her shoulders. Isabela would feel bad, if she was the type. 

Aveline scowls, but yields to the majority. Isabela is relieved - Fenris she can deal with. He minds his own business, most of the time. Usually. Sometimes. As much as any of them do, blasted busybodies.

“Admit it,” she says before Aveline and Hawke leaves. “You’re worried sick about me. You’d be devastated if I dropped off.”  


She winks as she says it, and nearly hiccups when Aveline grabs her by the shoulder with both hands, grip like a vice. Isabela thinks she’s done it, but she looks up and Aveline’s big chin - her big, brutish, beautiful chin - is scrunched up with restrained emotion.

“Don’t you make me say it.”

Isabela gets one rib-cracking hug from Hawke, a waist-snapping one from Varric, and then they’re gone. Only her and Anders and Fenris left. And Merrill, unconscious. 

She helps Anders move Merrill from the exam table in the middle of the room to a bed a bit further in, tries not to get caught up in the residue of panic over how still she lies, how pale and drawn she is, tries to focus on the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket.

Isabela and Fenris settle down on an empty bunk between Merrill and the wall. Anders hands her a bowl of leftover pea- and salt pork soup (Fenris refuses the begrudging offer, most likely out of principle) and disappears behind the curtain separating his miniscule sleeping quarters from the rest of the clinic. Isabela’s relieved. He’s earned a nap, and if the two of them decided to have a go at each other right now she might just implode. 

“She’s resilient,” Fenris says, nodding at Merrill, once Isabela’s wolfed down her soup.

“Yeah, she’s… Yeah.” Isabela wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She could really go for a drink right now. “So, this is new,” she says.

“Hm?”

“You, here. Watching over a mage.”

“She very nearly made another deal with a demon today,” Fenris says. “If it turns out the possession took hold, there must be someone at the ready to cut her down.” 

“You know what!?” All at once, Isabela’s furious. Merrill deserves better. “Merrill very nearly _died_ today, all right? Doing something really brave and admirable and- and…” She balls her fists. “And completely fucking foolish, and- and for what? And you know, she shouldn’t have! She shouldn’t have. I can’t deal with that, I can’t have that on me like a, like a-“ Isabela lets her head fall back against the wall. “I can’t take it. I can’t take this.”

Fenris looks at her in silence for a few moments. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a tiny smirk. 

“Yes. It’s frightening, isn’t it?”

“...What are you on about now?” 

“Getting involved with people,” he says. “To the point where you matter to them. Where there’s a possibility of hurting them. Risk, as well as reward.”  


“Just, shut up.”

“She clearly thought you were worth the sacrifice.”

“ _Seriously_. Can we not?”

“And you thought the same of her.”

“Would you lay off already?” Isabela rolls her eyes. “What do you want from me? A torrent of tears as I bare my wounded soul to the world? Because it won’t happen because I don’t have one.” 

“Of course not. It’s not as though I care.”

“Good.”

Fenris crosses his arms, looks at Merrill in front of him. “I’m not fond of her as you are. She has great capacity to cause harm, and I do not trust her not to. It may not be intentionally, but it has already been proven her intentions will not matter much.”

“I can’t believe I wish I’d stuck with Aveline instead of you.” 

“Yet even I can recognize what you’ve done for each other today is a gift.” He shrugs. “I don’t personally consider it a gift worth keeping, considering her nature, but there it is, nonetheless. You can either squander it or take it and grow.”

“...All right, that’s it. Get out.”

“Very well.” He gets to his feet. “Me and my Antivan brandy will take our leave, then.”

He pulls a flask out of a pouch at his belt. The metal glints. Isabela gasps. 

“I’ve changed my mind! You can stay. Forever.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Fenris sits back down. He unscrews the cap to the flask, fills it to the brim, then keeps it as he hands the flask itself to Isabela. Bless his rude, lecturing, annoyingly insightful heart. 

He raises the cap in a toast. “To my friend and the witch she saved.” A beat. “Who also saved her.”

Isabela snorts. “That was terrible,” she says, but she drinks deep anyway.

\--  


Isabela wakes up with a start at something poking at her nose. She lifts her head from where she’s been resting it on the bedside she’s sitting by, and tries to make sense of where she is, of what on earth she’s _wearing_.

“Oh,” Merrill says, her index finger an inch from Isabela’s face. “Oh, good. You were sitting so still it made me nervous.”

It all comes back to her in a rush. From the cave-in to to the brandy, the fear and triumph and desperation. The relief. She looks into Merrill’s eyes and joy blooms in her chest. 

“Hey, there.”

Merrill smiles. Sweet as honey, even with her face worn and tired, deep shadows below her eyes. Isabela takes her hand, Merrill’s slim finger cold and bony and perfect in hers. 

“You threw away the knife,” she says.

Isabela blinks. “I, what?”

“You threw the knife! Why did you throw the knife? You only had the one left, you shouldn’t have done that!” 

“You almost threw away yourself! ” Isabela stops, takes a deep breath. This isn’t a conversation she wants to have right now. “Don’t ever do that again.”

The lamps in Anders’ clinic are almost all put out. There is one still lit overhead, one at the door. The corners are dark but they are sitting in a little clearing of warm light. Fenris is snoring softly beside Isabela on the bunk, sagging against the wall behind him.

Merrill looks up at the ceiling.

“I’ve already lost so many people I love,” she says. “When I thought I would lose you, too… I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.” 

“...I know.”

Isabela strokes her hair. It’s matted, full of tangles, leaves her fingers grimy with oil and dust still clinging to the strands, but she does it again and again. 

“Isabela?” 

“Mm?”

“I love you so much.”

She’s so serious, enough that Isabela would laugh at her were they out on the street, in the Hanged Man, anywhere but here and now. She leans in to peck her on the forehead, but Merrill tilts her head up, offers her lips instead. The kiss is there for her to take and Isabela, Maker take her, she does, she _does._

“Are you sure about this, Merrill?” she says when they break apart. 

Merrill’s eyes glitter in the lamp light. “How could I not be? You’re so beautiful and clever and funny and kind.”

“Don’t forget liar, thief, pirate wench…”

“Stop it, don’t say that! It makes me sad.” She cups Isabela’s cheek. “You deserve better.”

She looks up at Isabela. Looks up at her wide-eyed and tender, soft and worried, like Isabela could just disappear at any moment, like she is treasure to be guarded and kept safe. Like she is sweet and bright and darling, like she's the deserving kind. 

Isabela might just cry about it, if she was the type. Instead she yawns.

“You should go home and rest,” Merrill says. “Don’t worry. I know you’ll be back.”

Merrill’s hand in hers - it’s a gamble, but Isabela thinks she’s willing to take the chance.

“No, Kitten. I’ll stay.”


End file.
